Mommy issues in “A Simple Favor”
“Secrets are like margarine,” quips Stephanie, the protagonist of “A Simple Favor,” Paul Feig’s new mystery/comedy/thriller. “Easy to spread, but bad for the heart.” It was at this moment, less than five minutes into the very temperamental film that I began to have my doubts. The line is uttered with the sort of relish that should define the film’s twists and turns, except the entire point of secrets is that they aren’t spread. Was this quip a tell for the silliness that comes to define Stephanie’s character or a sign of the film’s own lack of interest in logic in the face of the visceral? By the end of “A Simple Favor,” the question feels irrelevant.
The oftentimes shaky film is not without its successes. The very best thing about it is its ability to harness the worst qualities of its two lead actresses to dizzyingly good effect. Stephanie is played by Anna Kendrick, whose tendency for officious neediness sometimes manifests itself in characters that are just the wrong side of earnest, making her attempts at ironic detachment feel more effortful than natural. Blake Lively’s tendency for opacity has helped and hurt her throughout her career. It served her best in the in the under-seen “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee,” where she played a cipher to excellent results. “A Simple Favor,” then, benefits from the way it immediately riffs on these qualities.
Kendrick’s Stephanie Smothers (yes, as in likely to smother – the film’s lack of subtlety is a constant delight) is a widowed Type-A mother, who exasperates her fellow parents, her son and his teachers. She could not be more different from Lively’s Emily Nelson, the aloof, glamorous PR director who seems to be a mother under duress. The two strike up an unlikely friendship that immediately feels more expedient than sincere, and things turn from vaguely unsettling to legitimately unnerving when Emily disappears, leaving her young son with Stephanie. The friendship at the centre of the film is one of its largest hurdles. Moving beyond the obvious opposites-attracts chemistry, Feig and writer Jessica Sharzer never invest the friendship with the anchors it needs to seem real. And, so, everything that comes after seems caught between a winking practical joke and an insincere character study. As Stephanie begins to dig into Emily’s disappearance, she begins to grow dangerously close to Emily’s widower and son, and the plot goes just where you think it might, with the requisite left-field shocks thrown in.